Paul Kemp - The Godborn

Rivalen rode the shadows to the abbey. Much of it was ablaze, but fire and smoke could not harm Rivalen. He walked among the flames, amused that the home of the sun god finally radiated light, but only in its immolation. Tapestries curled as they burned. Roof timbers gave way in a shower of sparks. Stone cracked, fell in a hail of rubble.

Amid the ruins Rivalen found the corpses of two spined devils and the body of an old man, beaten beyond recognition. No other bodies.

That gave Rivalen pause.

The Oracle must have known an attack was coming. So he’d sent everyone away.

What else had he known?

His feet carried him through the fires to what appeared to be a shrine. The room included two burned biers, one knocked from its pedestal, the lid defaced and burned, the body that had been within burned to an unrecognizable cinder. He wondered who had been interred there, then reminded himself that it didn’t matter. The world and everyone in it, including him, would soon end in nothingness.

He pointed a finger at the ceiling and discharged a ray of energy that disintegrated a perfect circle through it, revealing the dark sky above. Through that he flew up and out into the night.

He rose high into the sky, one with the darkness, and looked down on the narrow gash of the flaming valley, the burned-out abbey.

Below, the devils continued to burn the woods and kill whatever creatures they could find.

“Mephistopheles’s creatures,” he said, irritated at their presence.

He moved from the darkness in the sky to the darkness under the canopy of the woods, a few paces from two of the spined devils. His sudden appearance halted their loping strides through the undergrowth. They crouched low, spines raised, teeth bare. He gestured, let power flow from his hand, and ripped every spine from their hides in a shower of flames and ichor. They yelped with agony and fell rolling to the ground, their raw, exposed flesh accreting pine needles and dirt. The cloud spines hung over them. He reversed all of them, pointed the barbed tips downward, and drove all of them back into the devils’ flesh. They shrieked and died.

He felt the darkness around him, the velvet of its touch across the entire valley. He sensed the location of another devil, stepped through the shadows to it, and, with a flick of his finger and a minor exercise of power, turned it inside out.

He moved to another, another, methodically destroying each of the creatures in ever more grotesque fashion.

“Stay in your hole in Cania, Archfiend,” he said, as a blast of life-draining energy left another spined devil a lifeless bag of hide and bones. “When the time is right, we’ll meet in Ordulin. All of us will.”

He saved the bone devil for last. The thin, lumbering creature stalked through the pines, its mouth open in a pained scream. It thrashed about wildly with its overlong arms and clawed hands, the long, curling tail that ended in a sharp spade of bone.

“Freedom!” it shouted, the word nonsensical, the tone tinged with madness.

Rivalen stepped from the shadows before it, let it see him. It halted, crouched, and flexed its claws. Its lower jaw dropped open, the fangs dripping with foul saliva. Stupidly, it pelted toward Rivalen, shrieking for blood.

Rivalen raised a hand, palm outward, and immobilized the creature in mid-stride. Dark energy whirled around it, holding it fast, keeping it silent. Rivalen stalked forward, contemplating suitable ends.

He felt a presence in the trees behind the devil, and an armored man burst out of the tree line. He was as tall as Rivalen but built as thickly as a barrel. He bore a large single-edge sword and a square shield in his hands. Dark, dead eyes stared out of a face barely visible for the thick beard he wore. Rivalen sensed the minor enchantments on the man’s shield, sword, and armor, but it was the twisting, odd signature of the magic affecting the man himself that kept Rivalen from annihilating him where he stood.

“Get away, Shadovar!” the man said, pointing his sword at Rivalen. “Back, I said.”

He advanced on Rivalen with blade and shield at the ready.

Curious, Rivalen retreated a step, hands held up in a gesture of harmlessness.

Rivalen tried to mask his power but the man seemed to pick up on it as he neared. He stopped his advance, a stride or two before the immobilized devil.

“Just leave us,” the man said.

“Us?”

The man’s eyes moved to the bound bone devil, back to Rivalen.

“Leave, Shadovar.”

Rivalen took a step forward, let more of his power manifest. Perhaps sensing what Rivalen was, the man fell back a step, eyes wide. “You’ve a fondness for devils? Who’s this creature to you?”

The man found his nerve and looked up sharply, as if Rivalen had slapped him. “He’s no creature, shade. He was- is -my brother.”

Rivalen understood the implication immediately. “And now he serves Mephistopheles?”

“He was betrayed by Mephistopheles! We both were!”

Rivalen saw an opportunity, used his power to put guile into his voice. “And the archfiend’s betrayal turned him into. . that?”

The man nodded hard, once.

“What’s your name?” Rivalen glided forward, closing the distance between them.

“What difference does it make? It’s all lost now. Everything. It was all for nothing.”

The words pleased Rivalen. He pulled the man’s name from his mind. “Sayeed. Your name is Sayeed.”

Sayeed’s brow furrowed. He took another step back, sword and shield ready.

“There’s nothing to fear,” Rivalen said, waving a shadow-strewn hand dismissively. “A minor cantrip. Your name hovered at the forefront of your thinking because I asked the question. You serve the archfiend as well, Sayeed?”

The man’s jaw tightened as he chewed on rising anger. “I serve myself. And my brother.”

“Your brother is gone. Whatever he was, that isn’t him.”

Sayeed’s expression fell but only for a moment before he recovered his stoicism. “We were-”

He cut himself short, shaking his head.

Again, Rivalen knew his words before he spoke them. “You were cursed. But not by the archdevil?”

“No, not by him. The Spellplague changed us.”

“Ah,” Rivalen said with a nod. “But Mephistopheles promised you release.” Rivalen gestured at the bound devil, Sayeed’s transformed brother. “And that is how an archfiend honors his word.”

The man glared at Rivalen, his hands opening and closing on the hilt of his sword. “A Shadovar is no better.”

Rivalen smiled. “Oh, you are world-weary, Sayeed. I see it clearly. I’ve known others like you, many others.” His memory flashed on Tamlin Uskevren, whose pain Rivalen had used to twist the young nobleman to his ends. “The world has treated you harshly. Hope wanes. Despair rises, replaced by bitterness. It’s warranted. You’re afflicted by hardship. I was, too, once. The Lady offers a place to lay such weight.”

Sayeed shook his head, looked away, but Rivalen saw something awaken behind the indifference. “The Lady? Shar?”

He said the word as many did, in hushed, fearful tones.

Rivalen stepped close to Sayeed, the two of them eye to eye, Sayeed caught up in Rivalen’s shadows.

“Shar, yes. The Lady of Loss knows your pain. What burden do you bear, Sayeed brother of Zeeahd? I’m her servant. Confess it to me.”

Sayeed swallowed. “No. It’s mine to bear.”

Rivalen admired the man’s stubbornness. “Share it. Perhaps I can help ease the weight.”

Sayeed stuck out his chin. “I require no help.”

Rivalen recognized the ground Sayeed stood on, offering the last bit of defiance. He saw potential in the man, a possible use. His despair and bitterness ran deeper, perhaps, than even Brennus’s. Shar had put Sayeed in Rivalen’s path, and Sayeed was but a small step away from where Rivalen needed him to be.